Snail Mail

The past couple of months have been pretty quiet here on the blog, and that’s mostly because I’ve been pouring all my time and energy and passion into launching an enormous new project that’s unlike anything I’ve ever undertaken before. I just began sharing it with the world this month and I’ve never been this excited about any of my other creative ventures, so I just have to make a little announcement about it here too!

So here it is: I’m going to be producing a handmade monthly subscription letter that celebrates art and literature and how it matters for the Great Battle of Our Time. I’ll fill these letters with watercolor paintings and sketches, field notes from nature or history or my travels, and illustrated poetry or quotes from my commonplace book. My dream for this project is to produce a letter that fills people with courage and creativity. And I want to make gorgeous, high-quality copies of them and personalize each one and mail them out all over the world.

I remember when I was a kid getting letters in the mail was always a festive occasion. I had a few friends who wrote me snail mail letters and I basically haunted the mailbox whenever I knew one was on the way. Sometimes I would bring the letter inside but wait a few hours to open it, just because I wanted the anticipation to last longer!

Fast-forward to today and most of my mail now is bills and bank statements and political ads and grocery store coupons for items I’m not ever going to buy. I think that might be true for most of us. And I don’t like that. So over the summer I’ve began toying with an idea for how to use to my gifts and talents and interests to revive beautiful, meaningful, and unique hard-copy mail.

Because I know: the world isn’t always a glad place. What’s around us is sometimes so dark. And I want to do some little thing to bring the wisdom and the beauty of the ages right down into mailboxes and homes in a tangible form: fresh artwork on paper you can hold and hang up on the fridge and carry around in your pocket. I want to revive beautiful, meaningful, and unique hard-copy mail. I want to give people courage, because goodness only knows we NEED it. I need it every day. So that’s why I decided to begin writing the Letters From the Sea Tower.

The inspiration for the name of this subscription comes from “The Monsters and the Critics,” an essay J.R.R. Tolkien wrote about literary criticism of Beowulf. In his essay, Tolkien tells a little allegorical story about a man who built a tower on his property. His friends and neighbors thought the tower was a waste of valuable material, but they didn’t know that the man had built it in order to be able to see the sea. My hope is that these letters will offer a similar vantage-point as the tower in that story, that in the middle of our often dreary and monotonous lives, they will be a reminder of glory and unseen reality and a fleeting glimpse of “joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.”

I don’t plan to make these letters a highlight reel or a carefully curated collection of the happy things happening in my life. Instead, I want them to be a well of stories and ideas that inspire others to take heart and remember their callings. And I want to draw out the glory from ordinary things so that others can be inspired to do the same in their own settings, no matter where they are.

Over the past two months, I’ve spent many hours getting this project ready to launch and producing the first letter. It’s printed right here in my own home on thick, 100% cotton paper and packaged in the most epic envelope, with ink stamps vintage postage stamps. So far, I’ve sent out fifty-four of these letters to giveaway winners, subscribers, and friends, and I have another twelve going out this week. In order to make the letters as accessible as possible, I’m offering subscriptions for three months, six months, or a year, and if you’re not sure if this subscription is for you, you can even purchase a one-month trial subscription for just $12 (which actually comes with two letters, since it includes the intro letter as well as the next monthly letter!) If this sounds like something you might want to be a part of, check out the subscription listing in my Etsy shop to learn more.

The project will officially begin in January 2019 when I mail out the second letter, which I’m currently creating. Afterwards, a new letter will be mailed out each month. That means this is the perfect time to subscribe if you want to be sure you don’t miss out on any of the letters! The subscription might also be a glorious and meaningful Christmas gift for friends who care about literature and the arts. Several people have already ordered gift subscriptions and I work with each one to create a unique, handwritten note explaining the subscription to the gift recipient.

Eventually, my hope is that each month I’ll be able to mail some of these letters out to people who aren’t subscribers at all and might not otherwise ever receive anything like this. The initial launch for a project like is quite costly and so I’ll need a stable subscriber base in order to be able to afford to expand the reach of the letters in this way. However, as I invite you to participate with me in the development of this project, I want to let you know my full vision for where I hope to take these Letters From the Sea Tower.

I have lived in too many places and I'm homesick for the Far Country. I like thunderstorms, painting, calligraphy, fairytales and noisy crowds of children, and I write about literature, the good life, and the World’s Great Lover. In my spare time, I create calligraphy and illustrations celebrating literary masterpieces. You can find my work in my Etsy shop or request a custom order.

Letters From The Sea Tower

Subscribe to get my handmade monthly subscription letter celebrating the living power of literature and how it matters for the Great Battle of Our Time.